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Rich, I agree about the “happy talk,” particularly with regard to the effect it has on expectations – both those actually created, and those artificially created in retrospect any time something goes wrong.

But I wonder whether such “happy talk” might not be a natural and justifiable response to the doom-crying I watch every morning on the three televisions that sit in front of my treadmill at the gym. It is hardly insightful to point out that news coverage in Iraq is focussed almost exclusively on the negative, but one doesn’t really get a flaor for the impact of that negativity until faced with a three-pronged, simultaneous assault. This morning, subjected to a coordinated closed-captioned assault by Katie Kouric, Diane Sawyer and that bitter fella over at CNN (whose name is on the tip of my fingers but is escaping me), I almost ran right off the treadmill and into therapy. The picture the coverage paints is that bad: a running, macabre body count (only of Americans); endless footage of downed helicopters, burning convoys and cheering militants; constant interviews with grieving families of slain soldiers; unrelenting concentration on hostages… Rip Van Winkle, waking from his slumber and turning on the tube this morning, would justifiably draw the conclusion that the United States is in its death throes, soon to be crushed under the heels of the Islamic militants.

At any rate, your comments got me thinking – if I and/or my beliefs were a peripheral target of all of this negative coverage, I’m not sure my response wouldn’t be to slip on the rose-colored glasses and indulge in a bit of optimistic hyperbole…